New research suggests that Mercury is still contracting and shrinking. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/Carnegie Institution of Washington/USGS/Arizona State University
Mercury is a fascinating planet. As our Suns’ closest orbiting body, it experiences extremes of heat and cold, has the most eccentric orbit of any Solar planet, and an orbital resonance that makes a single day last as long as two years. But since the arrival of the MESSENGER probe, we have learned some new and interesting things about the planet’s geological history as well.
For example, images that were recently obtained by the NASA spacecraft revealed previously undetected landforms – small fault scarps – that appear to be geologically young. The presence of these features have led scientists to conclude that Mercury is still contracting over time, which means that – like Earth – it is tectonically active.
In geology, fault scarps refer to small step-like formations in the surface of a planet, where one side of a fault has moved vertically relative to the other. Previously, scientists believed that Mercury was tectonically dead, and that all major geological activity had taken place in the planet’s early history.
Images showing small fault scarps and trough (lower and upper white arrows) found on Mercury;s surface. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/Carnegie Institution of Washington/Smithsonian Institution
This was evidenced by features spotted by the MESSENGER and Mariner 10 probes, both of which found evidence of large wrinkle ridges and fault scarps on the surface. The features were reasoned to be the result of Mercury contacting as it cooled early in its history (i.e. billion of years ago).
This action caused the planet’s crust to break, forming cliffs up to a kilometer and a half (about 1 mile) in height and hundreds of kilometers long. However, as the MESSENGER team noted, these small scarps were considerably younger, dating to about 50 million years of age.
They concluded that the scarps would have to be this young in order to survive bombardment by comets and meteoroids, a common occurrence on Mercury. They also noted their resemblance to similar features on the Moon, which also has young scarps that are the result of recent contraction.
“The young age of the small scarps means that Mercury joins Earth as a tectonically active planet, with new faults likely forming today as Mercury’s interior continues to cool and the planet contracts.”
The findings were made during the last 18 months of the MESSENGER mission, during which time the probe lowered its altitude to get higher-resolution images of the planet’s surface. The findings are also consistent with recent findings about Mercury’s global magnetic field, which appears to be powered by the planet’s slowly-cooling outer core.
As Jim Green, NASA’s Planetary Science Director, said of the discovery:
“This is why we explore. For years, scientists believed that Mercury’s tectonic activity was in the distant past. It’s exciting to consider that this small planet – not much larger than Earth’s moon – is active even today.”
All told, these findings have let scientists know that the planet is still alive, in the geological sense. It also means that that there is likely such as thing as Mercury-quakes, something which NASA is sure to follow up on if and when a lander mission (equipped with seismology instruments) is dispatched to the surface of the planet.
An illustration showing the 8 planets of the Solar System to scale Credit: NASA
At one time, humans believed that the Earth was the center of the Universe; that the Sun, Moon, planets and stars all revolved around us. It was only after centuries of ongoing observations and improved instrumentation that astronomers came to understand that we are in fact part a larger system of planets that revolve around the Sun. And it has only been within the last century that we’ve come to understand just how big our Solar System is.
And even now, we are still learning. In the past few decades, the total number of celestial bodies and moons that are known to orbit the Sun has expanded. We have also come to debate the definition of “planet” (a controversial topic indeed!) and introduced additional classifications – like dwarf planet, minor planet, plutoid, etc. – to account for new finds. So just how many planets are there and what is special about them? Let’s run through them one by one, shall we?
Mercury:
As you travel outward from the Sun, Mercury is the closest planet. It orbits the Sun at an average distance of 58 million km (36 million mi). Mercury is airless, and so without any significant atmosphere to hold in the heat, it has dramatic temperature differences. The side that faces the Sun experiences temperatures as high as 420 °C (788 °F), and then the side in shadow goes down to -173 °C (-279.4 °F).
MESSENGER image of Mercury from its third flyby. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Like Venus, Earth and Mars, Mercury is a terrestrial planet, which means it is composed largely of refractory minerals such as the silicates and metals such as iron and nickel. These elements are also differentiated between a metallic core and a silicate mantle and crust, with Mercury possessing a larger-than-average core. Multiple theories have been proposed to explain this, the most widely accepted being that the impact from a planetesimal in the past blew off much of its mantle material.
Mercury is the smallest planet in the Solar System, measuring just 4879 km across at its equator. However, it is second densest planet in the Solar System, with a density of 5.427 g/cm3 – which is the second only to Earth. Because of this, Mercury experiences a gravitational pull that is roughly 38% that of Earth’s (0.38 g).
Mercury also has the most eccentric orbit of any planet in the Solar System (0.205), which means its distance from the Sun ranges from 46 to 70 million km (29-43 million mi). The planet also takes 87.969 Earth days to complete an orbit. But with an average orbital speed of 47.362 km/s, Mercury also takes 58.646 days to complete a single rotation.
Combined with its eccentric orbit, this means that it takes 176 Earth days for the Sun to return to the same place in the sky (i.e. a solar day) on Mercury, which is twice as long as a single Hermian year. Mercury also has the lowest axial tilt of any planet in the Solar System – approximately 0.027 degrees – compared to Jupiter’s 3.1 degrees, which is the second smallest.
The MESSENGER spacecraft has been in orbit around Mercury since March 2011 – but its days are numbered. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Mercury has only been visited two times by spacecraft, the first being the Mariner 10 probe, which conducted a flyby of the planet back in the mid-1970s. It wasn’t until 2008 that another spacecraft from Earth made a close flyby of Mercury (the MESSENGER probe) which took new images of its surface, shed light on its geological history, and confirmed the presence of water ice and organic molecules in its northern polar region.
In summary, Mercury is made special by the fact it is small, eccentric, and varies between extremes of hot and cold. It’s also very mineral rich, and quite dense!
Venus:
Venus is the second planet in the Solar System, and is Earth’s virtual twin in terms of size and mass. With a mass of 4.8676×1024 kg and a mean radius of about 6,052 km, it is approximately 81.5% as massive as Earth and 95% as large. Like Earth (and Mercury and Mars), it is a terrestrial planet, composed of rocks and minerals that are differentiated.
But apart from these similarities, Venus is very different from Earth. Its atmosphere is composed primarily of carbon dioxide (96%), along with nitrogen and a few other gases. This dense cloud cloaks the planet, making surface observation very difficult, and helps heat it up to 460 °C (860 °F). The atmospheric pressure is also 92 times that of Earth’s atmosphere, and poisonous clouds of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid rain are commonplace.
Venus’ similarity in size and mass has led to it being called “Earth’s sister planet’. Credit: NASA/JPL/Magellan
Venus orbits the Sun at an average distance of about 0.72 AU (108 million km; 67 million mi) with almost no eccentricity. In fact, with its farthest orbit (aphelion) of 0.728 AU (108,939,000 km) and closest orbit (perihelion) of 0.718 AU (107,477,000 km), it has the most circular orbit of any planet in the Solar System. The planet completes an orbit around the Sun every 224.65 days, meaning that a year on Venus is 61.5% as long as a year on Earth.
When Venus lies between Earth and the Sun, a position known as inferior conjunction, it makes the closest approach to Earth of any planet, at an average distance of 41 million km. This takes place, on average, once every 584 days, and is the reason why Venus is the closest planet to Earth. The planet completes an orbit around the Sun every 224.65 days, meaning that a year on Venus is 61.5% as long as a year on Earth.
Unlike most other planets in the Solar System, which rotate on their axes in an counter-clockwise direction, Venus rotates clockwise (called “retrograde” rotation). It also rotates very slowly, taking 243 Earth days to complete a single rotation. This is not only the slowest rotation period of any planet, it also means that a single day on Venus lasts longer than a Venusian year.
Venus’ atmosphere is also known to experience lightning storms. Since Venus does not experience rainfall (except in the form of sulfuric acid), it has been theorized that the lightning is being caused by volcanic eruptions. Several spacecraft have visited Venus, and a few landers have even made it to the surface to send back images of its hellish landscape. Even though there were made of metal, these landers only survived a few hours at best.
Venus is made special by the fact that it is very much like Earth, but also radically different. It’s thick atmosphere could crush a living being, its heat could melt lead, and its acid rain could dissolve flesh, bone and metal alike! It also rotates very slowly, and backwards relative to the other plants.
Earth:
Earth is our home, and the third planet from the Sun. With a mean radius of 6371 km and a mass of 5.97×1024 kg, it is the fifth largest and fifth most-massive planet in the Solar System. And with a mean density of 5.514 g/cm³, it is the densest planet in the Solar System. Like Mercury, Venus and Mars, Earth is a terrestrial planet.
But unlike these other planets, Earth’s core is differentiated between a solid inner core and liquid outer core. The outer core also spins in the opposite direction as the planet, which is believed to create a dynamo effect that gives Earth its protective magnetosphere. Combined with a atmosphere that is neither too thin nor too thick, Earth is the only planet in the Solar System known to support life.
The Earth’s layers, showing the Inner and Outer Core, the Mantle, and Crust. Credit: discovermagazine.com
In terms of its orbit, Earth has a very minor eccentricity (approx. 0.0167) and ranges in its distance from the Sun between 147,095,000 km (0.983 AU) at perihelion to 151,930,000 km (1.015 AU) at aphelion. This works out to an average distance (aka. semi-major axis) of 149,598,261 km, which is the basis of a single Astronomical Unit (AU)
The Earth has an orbital period of 365.25 days, which is the equivalent of 1.000017 Julian years. This means that every four years (in what is known as a Leap Year), the Earth calendar must include an extra day. Though a single solar day on Earth is considered to be 24 hours long, our planet takes precisely 23h 56m and 4 s to complete a single sidereal rotation (0.997 Earth days).
Earth’s axis is also tilted 23.439281° away from the perpendicular of its orbital plane, which is responsible for producing seasonal variations on the planet’s surface with a period of one tropical year (365.24 solar days). In addition to producing variations in terms of temperature, this also results in variations in the amount of sunlight a hemisphere receives during the course of a year.
Earth has only a single moon: the Moon. Thanks to examinations of Moon rocks that were brought back to Earth by the Apollo missions, the predominant theory states that the Moon was created roughly 4.5 billion years ago from a collision between Earth and a Mars-sized object (known as Theia). This collision created a massive cloud of debris that began circling our planet, which eventually coalesced to form the Moon we see today.
A picture of Earth taken by Apollo 11 astronauts. Credit: NASA
What makes Earth special, you know, aside from the fact that it is our home and where we originated? It is the only planet in the Solar System where liquid, flowing water exists in abundance on its surface, has a viable atmosphere, and a protective magnetosphere. In other words, it is the only planet (or Solar body) that we know of where life can exist on the surface.
In addition, no planet in the Solar System has been studied as well as Earth, whether it be from the surface or from space. Thousands of spacecraft have been launched to study the planet, measuring its atmosphere, land masses, vegetation, water, and human impact. Our understanding of what makes our planet unique in our Solar System has helped in the search for Earth-like planets in other systems.
Mars:
The fourth planet from the Sun is Mars, which is also the second smallest planet in the Solar System. It has a radius of approximately 3,396 km at its equator, and 3,376 km at its polar regions – which is the equivalent of roughly 0.53 Earths. While it is roughly half the size of Earth, it’s mass – 6.4185 x 10²³ kg – is only 0.151 that of Earth’s. It’s density is also lower than Earths, which leads to it experiencing about 1/3rd Earth’s gravity (0.376 g).
It’s axial tilt is very similar to Earth’s, being inclined 25.19° to its orbital plane (Earth’s axial tilt is just over 23°), which means Mars also experiences seasons. Mars has almost no atmosphere to help trap heat from the Sun, and so temperatures can plunge to a low of -140 °C (-220 °F) in the Martian winter. However, at the height of summer, temperatures can get up to 20 °C (68 °F) during midday at the equator.
However, recent data obtained by the Curiosity rover and numerous orbiters have concluded that Mars once had a denser atmosphere. Its loss, according to data obtained by NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN), the atmosphere was stripped away by solar wind over the course of a 500 million year period, beginning 4.2 billion years ago.
At its greatest distance from the Sun (aphelion), Mars orbits at a distance of 1.666 AUs, or 249.2 million km. At perihelion, when it is closest to the Sun, it orbits at a distance of 1.3814 AUs, or 206.7 million km. At this distance, Mars takes 686.971 Earth days, the equivalent of 1.88 Earth years, to complete a rotation of the Sun. In Martian days (aka. Sols, which are equal to one day and 40 Earth minutes), a Martian year is 668.5991 Sols.
Like Mercury, Venus, and Earth, Mars is a terrestrial planet, composed mainly of silicate rock and metals that are differentiated between a core, mantle and crust. The red-orange appearance of the Martian surface is caused by iron oxide, more commonly known as hematite (or rust). The presence of other minerals in the surface dust allow for other common surface colors, including golden, brown, tan, green, and others.
Although liquid water cannot exist on Mars’ surface, owing to its thin atmosphere, large concentrations of ice water exist within the polar ice caps – Planum Boreum and Planum Australe. In addition, a permafrost mantle stretches from the pole to latitudes of about 60°, meaning that water exists beneath much of the Martian surface in the form of ice water. Radar data and soil samples have confirmed the presence of shallow subsurface water at the middle latitudes as well.
MSL Curiosity selfie on the surface of Mars. Image: NASA/JPL/Cal-Tech
Mars has two tiny asteroid-sized moons: Phobos and Deimos. Because of their size and shape, the predominant theory is that Mars acquired these two moons after they were kicked out of the Asteroid Belt by Jupiter’s gravity.
Mars has been heavily studied by spacecraft. There are multiple rovers and landers currently on the surface and a small fleet of orbiters flying overhead. Recent missions include the Curiosity Rover, which gathered ample evidence on Mars’ water past, and the groundbreaking discovery of finding organic molecules on the surface. Upcoming missions include NASA’s InSight lander and the Exomars rover.
Hence, Mars’ special nature lies in the fact that it also is terrestrial and lies within the outer edge of the Sun’s habitable zone. And whereas it is a cold, dry place today, it once had an thicker atmosphere and plentiful water on its surface.
Jupiter:
Mighty Jupiter is the fouth planet for our Sun and the biggest planet in our Solar System. Jupiter’s mass, volume, surface area and mean circumference are 1.8981 x 1027 kg, 1.43128 x 1015 km3, 6.1419 x 1010 km2, and 4.39264 x 105 km respectively. To put that in perspective, Jupiter diameter is roughly 11 times that of Earth, and 2.5 times the mass of all the other planets in the Solar System combined.
Jupiter has spectacular aurora, such as this view captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Nichols (University of Leicester)
But, being a gas giant, it has a relatively low density – 1.326 g/cm3 – which is less than one quarter of Earth’s. This means that while Jupiter’s volume is equivalent to about 1,321 Earths, it is only 318 times as massive. The low density is one way scientists are able to determine that it is made mostly of gases, though the debate still rages on what exists at its core (see below).
Jupiter orbits the Sun at an average distance (semi-major axis) of 778,299,000 km (5.2 AU), ranging from 740,550,000 km (4.95 AU) at perihelion and 816,040,000 km (5.455 AU) at aphelion. At this distance, Jupiter takes 11.8618 Earth years to complete a single orbit of the Sun. In other words, a single Jovian year lasts the equivalent of 4,332.59 Earth days.
However, Jupiter’s rotation is the fastest of all the Solar System’s planets, completing a rotation on its axis in slightly less than ten hours (9 hours, 55 minutes and 30 seconds to be exact). Therefore, a single Jovian year lasts 10,475.8 Jovian solar days. This orbital period is two-fifths that of Saturn, which means that the two largest planets in our Solar System form a 5:2 orbital resonance.
Much like Earth, Jupiter experiences auroras near its northern and southern poles. But on Jupiter, the auroral activity is much more intense and rarely ever stops. The intense radiation, Jupiter’s magnetic field, and the abundance of material from Io’s volcanoes that react with Jupiter’s ionosphere create a light show that is truly spectacular.
The Juno spacecraft isn’t the first one to visit Jupiter. Galileo went there in the mid 90’s, and Voyager 1 snapped a nice picture of the clouds on its mission. Credit: NASA
Jupiter also experiences violent weather patterns. Wind speeds of 100 m/s (360 km/h) are common in zonal jets, and can reach as high as 620 kph (385 mph). Storms form within hours and can become thousands of km in diameter overnight. One storm, the Great Red Spot, has been raging since at least the late 1600s. The storm has been shrinking and expanding throughout its history; but in 2012, it was suggested that the Giant Red Spot might eventually disappear.
Jupiter is composed primarily of gaseous and liquid matter. It is the largest of the gas giants, and like them, is divided between a gaseous outer atmosphere and an interior that is made up of denser materials. It’s upper atmosphere is composed of about 88–92% hydrogen and 8–12% helium by percent volume of gas molecules, and approx. 75% hydrogen and 24% helium by mass, with the remaining one percent consisting of other elements.
The interior contains denser materials, such that the distribution is roughly 71% hydrogen, 24% helium and 5% other elements by mass. It is believed that Jupiter’s core is a dense mix of elements – a surrounding layer of liquid metallic hydrogen with some helium, and an outer layer predominantly of molecular hydrogen. The core has also been described as rocky, but this remains unknown as well.
Jupiter has been visited by several spacecraft, including NASA’s Pioneer 10 and Voyager spacecraft in 1973 and 1980, respectively; and by the Cassini and New Horizons spacecraft more recently. Until the recent arrival of Juno, only the Galileo spacecraft has ever gone into orbit around Jupiter, and it was crashed into the planet in 2003 to prevent it from contaminating one of Jupiter’s icy moons.
Illustration of Jupiter and the Galilean satellites. Credit: NASA
In short, Jupiter is massive and has massive storms. But compared to the planets of the inner Solar System, is it significantly less dense. Jupiter also has the most moons in the Solar System, with 67 confirmed and named moons orbiting it. But it is estimated that as many as 200 natural satellites may exist around the planet. Little wonder why this planet is named after the king of the gods.
Saturn:
Saturn is the second largest planet in the Solar System. With a mean radius of 58232±6 km, it is approximately 9.13 times the size of Earth. And at 5.6846×1026 kg, it is roughly 95.15 as massive. However, since it is a gas giant, it has significantly greater volume – 8.2713×1014 km3, which is equivalent to 763.59 Earths.
The sixth most distant planet, Saturn orbits the Sun at an average distance of 9 AU (1.4 billion km; 869.9 million miles). Due to its slight eccentricity, the perihelion and aphelion distances are 9.022 (1,353.6 million km; 841.3 million mi) and 10.053 AU (1,513,325,783 km; 940.13 million mi), on average respectively.
With an average orbital speed of 9.69 km/s, it takes Saturn 10,759 Earth days to complete a single revolution of the Sun. In other words, a single Cronian year is the equivalent of about 29.5 Earth years. However, as with Jupiter, Saturn’s visible features rotate at different rates depending on latitude, and multiple rotation periods have been assigned to various regions.
This portrait looking down on Saturn and its rings was created from images obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft on Oct. 10th, 2013. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/G. Ugarkovic
As a gas giant, Saturn is predominantly composed of hydrogen and helium gas. With a mean density of 0.687 g/cm3, Saturn is the only planet in the Solar System that is less dense than water; which means that it lacks a definite surface, but is believed to have a solid core. This is due to the fact that Saturn’s temperature, pressure, and density all rise steadily toward the core.
Standard planetary models suggest that the interior of Saturn is similar to that of Jupiter, having a small rocky core surrounded by hydrogen and helium with trace amounts of various volatiles. This core is similar in composition to the Earth, but more dense due to the presence of metallic hydrogen, which as a result of the extreme pressure.
As a gas giant, the outer atmosphere of Saturn contains 96.3% molecular hydrogen and 3.25% helium by volume. Trace amounts of ammonia, acetylene, ethane, propane, phosphine and methane have been also detected in Saturn’s atmosphere. Like Jupiter, it also has a banded appearance, but Saturn’s bands are much fainter and wider near the equator.
On occasion, Saturn’s atmosphere exhibits long-lived ovals that are thousands of km wide, similar to what is commonly observed on Jupiter. Whereas Jupiter has the Great Red Spot, Saturn periodically has what’s known as the Great White Spot (aka. Great White Oval). This unique but short-lived phenomenon occurs once every Saturnian year, roughly every 30 Earth years, around the time of the northern hemisphere’s summer solstice.
The huge storm churning through the atmosphere in Saturn’s northern hemisphere overtakes itself as it encircles the planet in this true-color view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI
The persisting hexagonal wave pattern around the north pole was first noted in the Voyager images. The sides of the hexagon are each about 13,800 km (8,600 mi) long (which is longer than the diameter of the Earth) and the structure rotates with a period of 10h 39m 24s, which is assumed to be equal to the period of rotation of Saturn’s interior.
The south pole vortex, meanwhile, was first observed using the Hubble Space Telescope. These images indicated the presence of a jet stream, but not a hexagonal standing wave. These storms are estimated to be generating winds of 550 km/h, are comparable in size to Earth, and believed to have been going on for billions of years. In 2006, the Cassini space probe observed a hurricane-like storm that had a clearly defined eye. Such storms had not been observed on any planet other than Earth – even on Jupiter.
Of course, the most amazing feature of Saturn is its rings. These are made of particles of ice ranging in size from a grains of sand to the size of a car. Some scientists think the rings are only a few hundred million years old, while others think they could be as old as the Solar System itself.
Saturn has been visited by spacecraft 4 times: Pioneer 11, Voyager 1 and 2 were just flybys, but Cassini has actually gone into orbit around Saturn and has captured thousands of images of the planet and its moons. And speaking of moons, Saturn has a total of 62 moons discovered (so far), though estimates indicate that it might have as many as 150.
A collage of Saturn (bottom left) and some of its moons: Titan, Enceladus, Dione, Rhea and Helene. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
So like Jupiter, Saturn is a massive gas giant that experiences some very interesting weather patterns. It also has lots of moons and has a very low density. But what really makes Saturn stand out is its impressive ring system. Whereas every gas and ice giant has one, Saturn’s is visible to the naked eye and very beautiful to behold!
Uranus:
Next comes Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun. With a mean radius of approximately 25,360 km and a mass of 8.68 × 1025 kg, Uranus is approximately 4 times the sizes of Earth and 63 times its volume. However, as a gas giant, its density (1.27 g/cm3) is significantly lower; hence, it is only 14.5 as massive as Earth.
The variation of Uranus’ distance from the Sun is also greater than that any other planet (not including dwarf planets or plutoids). Essentially, the gas giant’s distance from the Sun varies from 18.28 AU (2,735,118,100 km) at perihelion to 20.09 AU (3,006,224,700 km) at aphelion. At an average distance of 3 billion km from the Sun, it takes Uranus roughly 84 years (or 30,687 days) to complete a single orbit of the Sun.
The standard model of Uranus’s structure is that it consists of three layers: a rocky (silicate/iron–nickel) core in the center, an icy mantle in the middle and an outer envelope of gaseous hydrogen and helium. Much like Jupiter and Saturn, hydrogen and helium account for the majority of the atmosphere – approximately 83% and 15% – but only a small portion of the planet’s overall mass (0.5 to 1.5 Earth masses).
Uranus as seen through the automated eyes of Voyager 2 in 1986. (Credit: NASA/JPL)
The third most abundant element is methane ice (CH4), which accounts for 2.3% of its composition and which accounts for the planet’s aquamarine or cyan coloring. Trace amounts of various hydrocarbons are also found in the stratosphere of Uranus, which are thought to be produced from methane and ultraviolent radiation-induced photolysis. They include ethane (C2H6), acetylene (C2H2), methylacetylene (CH3C2H), and diacetylene (C2HC2H).
In addition, spectroscopy has uncovered carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide in Uranus’ upper atmosphere, as well as the presence icy clouds of water vapor and other volatiles, such as ammonia and hydrogen sulfide. Because of this, Uranus and Neptune are considered a distinct class of giant planet – known as “Ice Giants” – since they are composed mainly of heavier volatile substances.
The rotational period of the interior of Uranus is 17 hours, 14 minutes. As with all giant planets, its upper atmosphere experiences strong winds in the direction of rotation. Hence its weather systems are also broken up into bands that rotate around the planet, which are driven by internal heat rising to the upper atmosphere.
As a result, winds on Uranus can reach up to 900 km/h (560 mph), creating massive storms like the one spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2012. Similar to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, this “Dark Spot” was a giant cloud vortex that measured 1,700 kilometers by 3,000 kilometers (1,100 miles by 1,900 miles).
Huge storms on Uranus were spotted by the Keck Observatory on Aug. 5 and Aug. 6, 2014. Credit: Imke de Pater (UC Berkeley), Pat Fry (University of Wisconsin), Keck Observatory
One unique feature of Uranus is that it rotates on its side. Whereas all of the Solar System’s planets are tilted on their axes to some degree, Uranus has the most extreme axial tilt of 98°. This leads to the radical seasons that the planet experiences, not to mention an unusual day-night cycle at the poles. At the equator, Uranus experiences normal days and nights; but at the poles, each experience 42 Earth years of day followed by 42 years of night.
Uranus was the first planet to be discovered with a telescope; it was first recognized as a planet in 1781 by William Herschel. Beyond Earth-based observations, only one spacecraft (Voyager 2) has ever studied Uranus up close. It passed by the planet in 1986, and captured the first close images. Uranus has 27 known moons.
Uranus’ special nature comes through in its natural beauty, its intense weather, its ring system and its impressive array of moons. And it’s compositions, being an “ice” giant, is what gives its aquamarine color. But perhaps mist interesting is its sideways rotation, which is unique among the Solar planets.
Neptune:
Neptune is the 8th and final planet in the Solar System, orbiting the Sun at a distance of 29.81 AU (4.459 x 109 km) at perihelion and 30.33 AU (4.537 x 109 km) at aphelion. With a mean radius of 24,622 ± 19 km, Neptune is the fourth largest planet in the Solar System and four times as large as Earth. But with a mass of 1.0243×1026 kg – which is roughly 17 times that of Earth – it is the third most massive, outranking Uranus.
Neptune’s system of moons and rings visualized. Credit: SETI
Neptune takes 16 h 6 min 36 s (0.6713 days) to complete a single sidereal rotation, and 164.8 Earth years to complete a single orbit around the Sun. This means that a single day lasts 67% as long on Neptune, whereas a year is the equivalent of approximately 60,190 Earth days (or 89,666 Neptunian days).
Due to its smaller size and higher concentrations of volatiles relative to Jupiter and Saturn, Neptune (much like Uranus) is often referred to as an “ice giant” – a subclass of a giant planet. Also like Uranus, Neptune’s internal structure is differentiated between a rocky core consisting of silicates and metals; a mantle consisting of water, ammonia and methane ices; and an atmosphere consisting of hydrogen, helium and methane gas.
The core of Neptune is composed of iron, nickel and silicates, with an interior model giving it a mass about 1.2 times that of Earth. The pressure at the center is estimated to be 7 Mbar (700 GPa), about twice as high as that at the center of Earth, and with temperatures as high as 5,400 K. At a depth of 7000 km, the conditions may be such that methane decomposes into diamond crystals that rain downwards like hailstones.
Because Neptune’s axial tilt (28.32°) is similar to that of Earth (~23°) and Mars (~25°), the planet experiences similar seasonal changes. Combined with its long orbital period, this means that the seasons last for forty Earth years. Also owing to its axial tilt being comparable to Earth’s is the fact that the variation in the length of its day over the course of the year is not any more extreme than it on Earth.
Reconstruction of Voyager 2 images showing the Great Black spot (top left), Scooter (middle), and the Small Black Spot (lower right). Credit: NASA/JPL
Just like Jupiter and Saturn, Neptune has bands of storms that circle the planet. Astronomers have clocked winds on Neptune traveling at 2,100 km/hour, which is believed to be due to Neptune’s cold temperatures – which may decrease the friction in the system, During its 1989 flyby, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft discovered the Great Dark Spot on Neptune.
Similar to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, this is an anti-cyclonic storm measuring 13,000 km x 6,600 km across. A few years later, however, the Hubble Space Telescope failed to see the Great Dark Spot, but it did see different storms. This might mean that storms on Neptune don’t last as long as they do on Jupiter or even Saturn.
The more active weather on Neptune might be due, in part, to its higher internal heat. Although Neptune is much more distant than Uranus from the Sun, receiving 40% less sunlight, temperatures on the surface of the two planets are roughly similar. In fact, Neptune radiates 2.61 times as much energy as it receives from the Sun. This is enough heat to help drive the fastest winds in the Solar System.
Neptune is the second planet discovered in modern times. It was discovered at the same time by both Urbain Le Verrier and John Couch Adams. Neptune has only ever been visited by one spacecraft, Voyager 2, which made a fly by in August, 1989. Neptune has 13 known moons. Th largest and most famous of these is Triton, which is believed to be a former KBO that was captured by Neptune’s gravity.
Global Color Mosaic of Triton, taken by Voyager 2 in 1989. Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS
So much like Uranus, Neptune has a ring system, some intense weather patterns, and an impressive array of moons. Also like Uranus, Neptune’s composition allows for its aquamarine color; except that in Neptune’s case, this color is more intense and vivid. In addition, Neptune experiences some temperature anomalies that are yet to be explained. And let’s not forgt the raining diamonds!
And those are the planets in the Solar System thank you for joining the tour! Unfortunately, Pluto isn’t a planet any more, hence why it was not listed. We know, we know, take it up with the IAU!
Planet Mercury as seen from the MESSENGER spacecraft in 2008. Credit: NASA/JPL
Welcome back to the first in our series on Settling the Solar System! First up, we take a look at that hot, hellish place located closest to the Sun – the planet Mercury!
Humanity has long dreamed of establishing itself on other worlds, even before we started going into space. We’ve talked about colonizing the Moon, Mars, and even establishing ourselves on exoplanets in distant star systems. But what about the other planets in our own backyard? When it comes to the Solar System, there is a lot of potential real estate out there that we don’t really consider.
Well, consider Mercury. While most people wouldn’t suspect it, the closest planet to our Sun is actually a potential candidate for settlement. Whereas it experiences extremes in temperature – gravitating between heat that could instantly cook a human being to cold that could flash-freeze flesh in seconds – it actually has potential as a starter colony.
Examples in Fiction:
The idea of colonizing Mercury has been explored by science fiction writers for almost a century. However, it has only been since the mid-20th century that colonization has been dealt with in a scientific fashion. Some of the earliest known examples of this include the short stories of Leigh Brackett and Isaac Asimov during the 1940s and 50s.
In the former’s work, Mercury is a tidally-locked planet (which was what astronomers believed at the time) that has a “Twilight Belt” characterized by extremes in heat, cold, and solar storms. Some of Asimov’s early work included short stories where a similarly tidally-locked Mercury was the setting, or characters came from a colony located on the planet.
Mercury, as imaged by the MESSENGER spacecraft, revealing parts of the never seen by human eyes. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
These included “Runaround” (written in 1942, and later included in I, Robot), which centers on a robot that is specifically designed to cope with the intense radiation of Mercury. In Asimov’s murder-mystery story “The Dying Night” (1956) – in which the three suspects hail from Mercury, the Moon, and Ceres – the conditions of each location are key to finding out who the murderer is.
In 1946, Ray Bradbury published “Frost and Fire”, a short story that takes place on a planet described as being next to the sun. The conditions on this world allude to Mercury, where the days are extremely hot, the nights extremely cold, and humans live for only eight days. Arthur C. Clarke’s Islands in the Sky (1952) contains a description of a creature that lives on what was believed at the time to be Mercury’s permanently dark side and occasionally visits the twilight region.
In his later novel, Rendezvous with Rama (1973), Clarke describes a colonized Solar System which includes the Hermians, a toughened branch of humanity that lives on Mercury and thrives off the export of metals and energy. The same setting and planetary identities are used in his 1976 novel Imperial Earth.
In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel The Sirens of Titan (1959), a section of the story is set in caves located on the dark side of the planet. Larry Niven’s short story “The Coldest Place” (1964) teases the reader by presenting a world that is said to be the coldest location in the Solar System, only to reveal that it is the dark side of Mercury (and not Pluto, as is generally assumed).
“Lava Falls on Mercury” (by Ken Fagg) for If magazine, June 1954. Credit: Public Domain
Mercury also serves as a location in many of Kim Stanley Robinson’s novels and short stories. These include The Memory of Whiteness (1985), Blue Mars (1996), and 2312 (2012), in which Mercury is the home to a vast city called Terminator. To avoid the harmful radiation and heat, the city rolls around the planet’s equator on tracks, keeping pace with the planet’s rotation so that it stays ahead of the Sun.
In 2005, Ben Bova published Mercury (part of his Grand Tour series) that deals with the exploration of Mercury and colonizing it for the sake of harnessing solar energy. Charles Stross’ 2008 novel Saturn’s Children involves a similar concept to Robinson’s 2312, where a city called Terminator traverses the surface on rails, keeping pace with the planet’s rotation.
Proposed Methods:
A number of possibilities exist for a colony on Mercury, owing to the nature of its rotation, orbit, composition, and geological history. For example, Mercury’s slow rotational period means that one side of the planet is facing towards the Sun for extended periods of time – reaching temperatures highs of up to 427 °C (800 °F) – while the side facing away experiences extreme cold (-193 °C; -315 °F).
In addition, the planet’s rapid orbital period of 88 days, combined with its sidereal rotation period of 58.6 days, means that it takes roughly 176 Earth days for the Sun to return to the same place in the sky (i.e. a solar day). Essentially, this means that a single day on Mercury lasts as long as two of its years. So if a city were placed on the night-side, and had tracks wheels so it could keep moving to stay ahead of the Sun, people could live without fear of burning up.
Images of Mercury’s northern polar region, provided by MESSENGER. Credit: NASA/JPL
In addition, Mercury’s very low axial tilt (0.034°) means that its polar regions are permanently shaded and cold enough to contain water ice. In the northern region, a number of craters were observed by NASA’s MESSENGER probe in 2012 which confirmed the existence of water ice and organic molecules. Scientists believe that Mercury’s southern pole may also have ice, and claim that an estimated 100 billion to 1 trillion tons of water ice could exist at both poles, which could be up to 20 meters thick in places.
In these regions, a colony could be built using a process called “paraterraforming” – a concept invented by British mathematician Richard Taylor in 1992. In a paper titled “Paraterraforming – The Worldhouse Concept”, Taylor described how a pressurized enclosure could be placed over the usable area of a planet to create a self-contained atmosphere. Over time, the ecology inside this dome could be altered to meet human needs.
In the case of Mercury, this would include pumping in a breathable atmosphere, and then melting the ice to create water vapor and natural irrigation. Eventually, the region inside the dome would become a livable habitat, complete with its own water cycle and carbon cycle. Alternately, the water could be evaporated, and oxygen gas created by subjecting it to solar radiation (a process known as photolysis).
Another possibility would be to build underground. For years, NASA has been toying with the idea of building colonies in stable, underground lava tubes that are known to exist on the Moon. And geological data obtained by the MESSENGER probe during flybys it conducted between 2008 and 2012 led to speculation that stable lava tubes might exist on Mercury as well.
A previous MESSENGER image of hollows inside Tyagaraja crater. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
This includes information obtained during the probe’s 2009 flyby of Mercury, which revealed that the planet was a lot more geologically active in the past than previously thought. In addition, MESSENGER began spotting strange Swiss cheese-like features on the surface in 2011. These holes, which are known as “hollows”, could be an indication that underground tubes exist on Mercury as well.
Colonies built inside stable lava tubes would be naturally shielded to cosmic and solar radiation, extremes in temperature, and could be pressurized to create breathable atmospheres. In addition, at this depth, Mercury experiences far less in the way of temperature variations and would be warm enough to be habitable.
Potential Benefits:
At a glance, Mercury looks similar to the Earth’s Moon, so settling it would rely on many of the same strategies for establishing a moon base. It also has abundant minerals to offer, which could help move humanity towards a post-scarcity economy. Like Earth, it is a terrestrial planet, which means it is made up of silicate rocks and metals that are differentiated between an iron core and silicate crust and mantle.
However, Mercury is composed of 70% metals whereas’ Earth’s composition is 40% metal. What’s more, Mercury has a particular large core of iron and nickel, and which accounts for 42% of its volume. By comparison, Earth’s core accounts for only 17% of its volume. As a result, if Mercury were to be mined, enough minerals could be produced to last humanity indefinitely.
The different colors in this MESSENGER image of Mercury indicate the planet’s chemical, mineralogical, and physical differences. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington.
Its proximity to the Sun also means that it could harness a tremendous amount of energy. This could be gathered by orbital solar arrays, which would be able to harness energy constantly and beam it to the surface. This energy could then be beamed to other planets in the Solar System using a series of transfer stations positioned at Lagrange Points.
Also, there’s the matter of Mercury’s gravity, which is 38% percent of Earth’s gravity. This is over twice what the Moon experiences, which means colonists would have an easier time adjusting to it. At the same time, it is also low enough to present benefits as far as exporting minerals is concerned, since ships departing from the surface would need less energy to achieve escape velocity.
Lastly, there is the distance to Mercury itself. At an average distance of about 93 million km (58 million mi), Mercury ranges between being 77.3 million km (48 million mi) to 222 million km (138 million mi) away from the Earth. This puts it a lot closer than other possible resource-rich areas like the Asteroid Belt (329 – 478 million km distant), Jupiter and its system of moons (628.7 – 928 million km), or Saturn’s (1.2 – 1.67 billion km).
Also, Mercury achieves inferior conjunction – the point where it is at its closest point to Earth – every 116 days, which is significantly shorter than either Venus’ or Mars’. Basically, missions destined for Mercury could launch almost every four months, whereas launch windows to Venus and Mars would have to take place every 1.6 years and 26 months, respectively.
The MESSENGER spacecraft has been in orbit around Mercury since March 2011 – but its days are numbered. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/Carnegie Institution of Washington
In terms of travel time, several missions have been mounted to Mercury that can give us a ballpark estimate of how long it might take. For instance, the first spacecraft to travel to Mercury, NASA’s Mariner 10 spacecraft (which launched in 1973), took about 147 days to get there.
More recently, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft launched on August 3rd, 2004 to study Mercury in orbit, and made its first flyby on January 14th, 2008. That’s a total of 1,260 days to get from Earth to Mercury. The extended travel time was due to engineers seeking to place the probe in orbit around the planet, so it needed to proceed at a slower velocity.
Challenges:
Of course, a colony on Mercury would still be a huge challenge, both economically and technologically. The cost of establishing a colony anywhere on the planet would be tremendous and would require abundant materials to be shipped from Earth, or mined on site. Either way, such an operation would require a large fleet of spaceships capable of making the journey in a respectable amount of time.
Such a fleet does not yet exist, and the cost of developing it (and the associated infrastructure for getting all the necessary resources and supplies to Mercury) would be tremendous. Relying on robots and in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) would certainly cut costs and reduce the amount of materials that would need to be shipped. But these robots and their operations would need to be shielded from radiation and solar flares until they got the job done.
Enhanced-color image of Munch, Sander, and Poe craters amid volcanic plains (orange) near Caloris Basin. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Basically, the situation is like trying to establish a shelter in the middle of a thunderstorm. Once it is complete, you can take shelter. But in the meantime, you’re likely to get wet and dirty! And even once the colony was complete, the colonists themselves would have to deal with the ever-present hazards of radiation exposure, decompression, and extremes in heat and cold.
As such, if a colony was established on Mercury, it would be heavily dependent on its technology (which would have to be rather advanced). Also, until such time as the colony became self-sufficient, those living there would be dependent on supply shipments that would have to come regularly from Earth (again, shipping costs!)
Still, once the necessary technology was developed, and we could figure out a cost-effective way to create one or more settlements and ship to Mercury, we could look forward to having a colony that could provide us with limitless energy and minerals. And we would have a group of human neighbors known as Hermians!
As with everything else pertaining to colonization and terraforming, once we’ve established that it is in fact possible, the only remaining question is “how much are we willing to spend?”
Caloris in Color – An enhanced-color view of Mercury from the cameras on board the MESSENGER spacecraft. The circular, orange area near the center-top of the disc is Caloris Basin. Credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Carnegie Institution of Washington
Thinking of taking a vacation this summer? Maybe you want to distract yourself with a bit of light science fiction fun. How about a deadly alien life form harbored within our solar system? That’s what Nick Kanas presents in his scientific novel “The Caloris Network.” Being placed not too far into the future, this novel lets the reader enjoy a believable taste of first contact that’s hopefully just as good as the contact from their first summer kiss.
A pleasant novel has an intriguing plot that’s embellished with the interaction of fun characters. Sometimes it will also carry a somber undertone ringing in the background. So unravels the novel “Caloris Network.” The main character, Sam, is an astrobiologist fresh from looking at multicellular life on Europa. At home, her family suffers serious health concerns but she’s continuing with her efforts. Her research takes her to Mercury where something is raising the concern of the spacefaring military. Her fellow crew members involve a possible Martian secessionist, a cranky commander and a love triangle. All this is pretty typical fare.
Next up you may think there’d be the traditional English speaking alien biped threatening the very existence of the human race. But not this time. Instead Kanas identifies the protagonist as a silicate based lifeform on Mercury. No legs for walking and no lips for speaking. Further, this is the proverbial first contact between the human race and a living, thinking organism from another world. Will it be confrontational? As usual. Will it involve death rays? Kind of. Will it force the reader to ponder how to interact for the first time with an alien? Certainly! This is the best part of the book in that it places the reader not so far into the future so as to make the story readily believable. Being barely over a hundred years away, the reader can connect with the technological advances for an expedition on Mercury, for living on Mars and for the poor environmental state of Earth. With the simple lives of the expedition’s crew, the constrained space travel and the understated alien, Kanas has written a novel that would be fun for that long car ride or a day on the beach.
As a bonus, the author includes a chapter at the end of the book that discusses some of the science presented. It has details on what we’ve discovered of Mercury, particularly with regard to what a human visitor might encounter if standing on its surface; the temperature from searing heat to mind numbing cold, a Sun that changes direction in the sky and effects of a molten interior.
For even more fun when you’re at the beach, there’s an inclusion of how to define life. For instance, “Does it need to move?” “What do we mean by reproduction?” “How do we test for the ability to think?” and most entertaining of all, “How do we communicate with it when we can’t even communicate with dolphins yet?” These and other ideas in the novel may keep you up late discussing our very existence while watching the embers of the cottage campfire settle to a deep dark red.
Certainly something on Europa, Titan and Venus awaits people. Maybe it’s alien life. Maybe the life prefers to exist without humans coming to explore. Maybe they will be exactly as what Nick Kanas writes in his scientific novel “The Caloris Network”. With your imagination, take this novel’s plot as believable and see where it takes you. And maybe by reading this on your vacation, you may think that you’ve waited long enough and it’s time to go find out.
Planets and other objects in our Solar System. Credit: NASA.
It is a well known fact that the planets of the Solar System vary considerably in terms of size. For instance, the planets of the inner Solar System are smaller and denser than the gas/ice giants of the outer Solar System. And in some cases, planets can actually be smaller than the largest moons. But a planet’s size is not necessarily proportional to its mass. In the end, how massive a planet is has more to do with its composition and density.
So while a planet like Mercury may be smaller in size than Jupiter’s moon Ganymede or Saturn’s moon Titan, it is more than twice as massive than they are. And while Jupiter is 318 times as massive as Earth, its composition and density mean that it is only 11.21 times Earth’s size. Let’s go over the planet’s one by one and see just how massive they are, shall we?
Mercury:
Mercury is the Solar System’s smallest planet, with an average diameter of 4879 km (3031.67 mi). It is also one of its densest at 5.427 g/cm3, which is second only to Earth. As a terrestrial planet, it is composed of silicate rock and minerals and is differentiated between an iron core and a silicate mantle and crust. But unlike its peers (Venus, Earth and Mars), it has an abnormally large metallic core relative to its crust and mantle.
All told, Mercury’s mass is approximately 0.330 x 1024 kg, which works out to 330,000,000 trillion metric tons (or the equivalent of 0.055 Earths). Combined with its density and size, Mercury has a surface gravity of 3.7 m/s² (or 0.38 g).
Internal structure of Mercury: 1. Crust: 100–300 km thick 2. Mantle: 600 km thick 3. Core: 1,800 km radius. Credit: MASA/JPL
Venus:
Venus, otherwise known as “Earth’s Sister Planet”, is so-named because of its similarities in composition, size, and mass to our own. Like Earth, Mercury and Mars, it is a terrestrial planet, and hence quite dense. In fact, with a density of 5.243 g/cm³, it is the third densest planet in the Solar System (behind Earth and Mercury). Its average radius is roughly 6,050 km (3759.3 mi), which is the equivalent of 0.95 Earths.
And when it comes to mass, the planet weighs in at a hefty 4.87 x 1024 kg, or 4,870,000,000 trillion metric tons. Not surprisingly, this is the equivalent of 0.815 Earths, making it the second most massive terrestrial planet in the Solar System. Combined with its density and size, this means that Venus also has comparable gravity to Earth – roughly 8.87 m/s², or 0.9 g.
Earth:
Like the other planets of the inner Solar System, Earth is also a terrestrial planet, composed of metals and silicate rocks differentiated between an iron core and a silicate mantle and crust. Of the terrestrial planets, it is the largest and densest, with an average radius of 6,371.0 km (3,958.8 mi) and a mean of density of 5.514 g/cm3.
The Earth’s layers, showing the Inner and Outer Core, the Mantle, and Crust. Credit: discovermagazine.com
And at 5.97 x 1024 kg (which works out to 5,970,000,000,000 trillion metric tons) Earth is the most massive of all the terrestrial planets. Combined with its size and density, Earth experiences the surface gravity that we are all familiar with – 9.8 m/s², or 1 g.
Mars:
Mars is the third largest terrestrial planet, and the second smallest planet in our Solar System. Like the others, it is composed of metals and silicate rocks that are differentiated between a iron core and a silicate mantle and crust. But while it is roughly half the size of Earth (with a mean diameter of 6792 km, or 4220.35 mi), it is only one-tenth as massive.
In short, Mars has a mass of 0.642 x1024 kg, which works out to 642,000,000 trillion metric tons, or roughly 0.11 the mass of Earth. Combined with its size and density – 3.9335 g/cm³ (which is roughly 0.71 times that of Earth’s) – Mars has a surface gravity of 3.711 m/s² (or 0.376 g).
Jupiter:
Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System. With a mean diameter of 142,984 km, it is big enough to fit all the other planets (except Saturn) inside itself, and big enough to fit Earth 11.8 times over. But with a mass of 1898 x 1024 kg (or 1,898,000,000,000 trillion metric tons), Jupiter is more massive than all the other planets in the Solar System combined – 2.5 times more massive, to be exact.
Jupiter’s structure and composition. (Image Credit: Kelvinsong CC by S.A. 3.0)
However, as a gas giant, it has a lower overall density than the terrestrial planets. It’s mean density is 1.326 g/cm, but this increases considerably the further one ventures towards the core. And though Jupiter does not have a true surface, if one were to position themselves within its atmosphere where the pressure is the same as Earth’s at sea level (1 bar), they would experience a gravitational pull of 24.79 m/s2 (2.528 g).
Saturn:
Saturn is the second largest of the gas giants; with a mean diameter of 120,536 km, it is just slightly smaller than Jupiter. However, it is significantly less massive than its Jovian cousin, with a mass of 569 x 1024 kg (or 569,000,000,000 trillion metric tons). Still, this makes Saturn the second most-massive planet in the Solar System, with 95 times the mass of Earth.
Much like Jupiter, Saturn has a low mean density due to its composition. In fact, with an average density of 0.687 g/cm³, Saturn is the only planet in the Solar System that is less dense than water (1 g/cm³). But of course, like all gas giants, its density increases considerably the further one ventures towards the core. Combined with its size and mass, Saturn has a “surface” gravity that is just slightly higher than Earth’s – 10.44 m/s², or 1.065 g.
Diagram of Saturn’s interior. Credit: Kelvinsong/Wikipedia Commons
Uranus:
With a mean diameter of 51,118 km, Uranus is the third largest planet in the Solar System. But with a mass of 86.8 x 1024 kg (86,800,000,000 trillion metric tons) it is the fourth most massive – which is 14.5 times the mass of Earth. This is due to its mean density of 1.271 g/cm3, which is about three quarters of what Neptune’s is. Between its size, mass, and density, Uranus’ gravity works out to 8.69 m/s2, which is 0.886 g.
Neptune:
Neptune is significantly larger than Earth; at 49,528 km, it is about four times Earth’s size. And with a mass of 102 x 1024 kg (or 102,000,000,000 trillion metric tons) it is also more massive – about 17 times more to be exact. This makes Neptune the third most massive planet in the Solar System; while its density is the greatest of any gas giant (1.638 g/cm3). Combined, this works out to a “surface” gravity of 11.15 m/s2 (1.14 g).
As you can see, the planets of the Solar System range considerably in terms of mass. But when you factor in their variations in density, you can see how a planets mass is not always proportionate to its size. In short, while some planets may be a few times larger than others, they are can have many, many times more mass.
Planets in the Solar System. Image credit: NASA/JPL/IAU
The planets of our Solar System vary considerably in size and shape. Some planets are small enough that they are comparable in diameter to some of our larger moons – i.e. Mercury is smaller than Jupiter’s moon Ganymede and Saturn’s moon Titan. Meanwhile, others like Jupiter are so big that they are larger in diameter than most of the others combined.
In addition, some planets are wider at the equator than they are at the poles. This is due to a combination of the planets composition and their rotational speed. As a result, some planets are almost perfectly spherical while others are oblate spheroids (i.e. experience some flattening at the poles). Let us examine them one by one, shall we?
Mercury:
With a diameter of 4,879 km (3031.67 mi), Mercury is the smallest planet in our Solar System. In fact, Mercury is not much larger than Earth’s own Moon – which has a diameter of 3,474 km (2158.64 mi). At 5,268 km (3,273 mi) in diameter, Jupiter’s moon of Ganymede is also larger, as is Saturn’s moon Titan – which is 5,152 km (3201.34 mi) in diameter.
Mercury, as imaged by the MESSENGER spacecraft, revealing parts of the never seen by human eyes. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
As with the other planets in the inner Solar System (Venus, Earth, and Mars), Mercury is a terrestrial planet, which means it is composed primarily of metals and silicate rocks that are differentiated into an iron-rich core and a silicate mantle and crust.
Also, due to the fact that Mercury has a very slow sidereal rotational period, taking 58.646 days to complete a single rotation on its axis, Mercury experiences no flattening at the poles. This means that the planet is almost a perfect sphere and has the same diameter whether it is measured from pole to pole or around its equator.
Venus:
Venus is often referred to as Earth’s “sister planet“, and not without good reason. At 12,104 km (7521 mi) in diameter, it is almost the same size as Earth. But unlike Earth, Venus experiences no flattening at the poles, which means that it almost perfectly circular. As with Mercury, this is due to Venus’ slow sidereal rotation period, taking 243.025 days to rotate once on its axis.
The planet Venus, as imaged by the Magellan 10 mission. Credit: NASA/JPL
Earth:
With a mean diameter of 12,756 km (7926 mi), Earth is the largest terrestrial planet in the Solar System and the fifth largest planet overall. However, due to flattening at its poles (0.00335), Earth is not a perfect sphere, but an oblate spheroid. As a result, its polar diameter differs from its equatorial diameter, but only by about 41 km (25.5 mi)
In short, Earth measures 12713.6 km (7900 mi) in diameter from pole to pole, and 12756.2 km (7926.3 mi) around its equator. Once again, this is due to Earth’s sidereal rotational period, which takes a relatively short 23 hours, 58 minutes and 4.1 seconds to complete a single rotation on its axis.
Mars:
Mars is often referred to as “Earth’s twin”; and again, for good reason. Like Earth, Mars experiences flattening at its poles (0.00589), which is due to its relatively rapid sidereal rotational period (24 hours, 37 minutes and 22 seconds, or 1.025957 Earth days).
As a result, it experiences a bulge at its equator which leads to a variation of 40 km (25 mi) between its polar radius and equatorial radius. This works out to Mars having a mean diameter of 6779 km (4212.275 mi), varying between 6752.4 km (4195.75 mi) between its poles and 6792.4 km (4220.6 mi) at its equator.
Mosaic of the Valles Marineris hemisphere of Mars, similar to what one would see from orbital distance of 2500 km. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Jupiter:
Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System, measuring some 142,984 km (88,846 mi) in diameter. Again, this its mean diameter, since Jupiter experiences some rather significant flattening at the poles (0.06487). This is due to its rapid rotational period, with Jupiter taking just 9 hours 55 minutes and 30 seconds to complete a single rotation on its axis.
Combined with the fact that Jupiter is a gas giant, this means the planet experiences significant bulging at its equator. Basically, it varies in diameter from 133,708 km (83,082.3 mi) when measured from pole to pole, and 142,984 km (88,846 mi) when measured around the equator. This is a difference of 9276 km (5763.8 mi), one of the most pronounced in the Solar System.
Saturn:
With a mean diameter of 120,536 km (74897.6 mi), Saturn is the second largest planet in the Solar System. Like Jupiter, it experiences significant flattening at its poles (0.09796) due to its high rotational velocity (10 hours and 33 minutes) and the fact that it is a gas giant. This means that it varies in diameter from 108,728 km (67560.447 mi) when measured at the poles and 120,536 km (74,897.6 mi) when measured at the equator. This is a difference of almost 12,000 km, the greatest of all planets.
This portrait looking down on Saturn and its rings was created from images obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft on Oct. 10, 2013. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/G. Ugarkovic
Uranus:
Uranus has a mean diameter of 50,724 km (31,518.43 mi), making it the third largest planet in the Solar System. But due to its rapid rotational velocity – the planet takes 17 hours 14 minutes and 24 seconds to complete a single rotation – and its composition, the planet experiences a significant polar flattening (0.0229). This leads to a variation in diameter of 49,946 km (31,035 mi) at the poles and 51,118 km (31763.25 mi) at the equator – a difference of 1172 km (728.25 mi).
Neptune:
Lastly, there is Neptune, which has a mean diameter of 49,244 km (30598.8 mi). But like all the other gas giants, this varies due to its rapid rotational period (16 hours, 6 minutes and 36 seconds) and composition, and subsequent flattening at the poles (0.0171). As a result, the planet experiences a variation of 846 km (525.68 mi), measuring 48,682 km (30249.59 mi) at the poles and 49,528 km (30775.27 mi) at the equator.
In summary, the planets of our Solar System vary in diameter due to differences in their composition and the speed of their rotation. In short, terrestrial planets tend to be smaller than gas giants, and gas giants tend to spin faster than terrestrial worlds. Between these two factors, the worlds we know range between near-perfect spheres and flattened spheres.
The Big Bear Solar Observatory Captures a high-res image of this week's transit of Mercury across the face of the Sun. Image credit: NJIT/BBSO
Just. Wow.
Just when we thought we’d seen every amazing image and video sequence from Monday’s transit of Mercury, a new one surfaces that makes our jaw hit the floor.
Remember, Mercury is tiny a world, just 1.4 times the diameter of our Moon, at 4,880 kilometers across. At about 9″ arc seconds across during the transit, it took Mercury seven and a half hours to race across the 30′ (over 180 times the apparent size of Mercury as seen from the Earth) disk of the Sun.
The video has an ethereal three dimensional quality to it, as we seem to race along with the fleeting world. You can see the granulation in the dazzling solar photosphere whiz by in the background.
Big Bear Solar Observatory Telescope Engineer and Chief Observer Claude Plymate explains some of the technical aspects of the captured sequence:
“John Varsik assembled (the video) from our speckle reconstructed broadband filter images. The images were taken with a high speed PCO2000 CCD camera. Bursts of 100 frames were taken at a cadence of 15 seconds. After flat fielding and dark subtraction, speckle reconstruction is used on each burst to generate the final single frame. Exposure time was 1.0 ms through a broadband TiO (7057A, 10A FWHM) filter.
Our actual primary science data was data taken with a fast scanning spectrometer that very quickly produces 2D Na D-line maps. The objective was to measure the Na distribution in Mercury’s exosphere in absorption.”
So there’s some science there as well, as measurements taken from Big Bear will make a fine comparison and contrast with NASA’s measurements of the tenuous exosphere of Mercury measured by the MESSENGER spacecraft.
Based on the shores of Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains 120 kilometers east of downtown Los Angeles, the Big Bear Solar Observatory employed the 1.6-meter New Solar Telescope (NST) to follow the transit. The NST is the largest clear aperture solar telescope in the world currently in use. Capable of resolving features on the Sun just 50 kilometers across, the mirror blank for the NST was figured at the Mirror Lab at the University of Arizona in Tucson and served as a proof of concept for the seven mirror Giant Magellan Telescope currently under construction.
The Big Bear Solar Observatory. Image Credit: The NJIT/BBSO
The Big Bear Solar Observatory is managed under the New Jersey Institute of Technology and is funded by NASA, the United States Air Force and the National Science Foundation.
The Big Bear Solar Observatory is also part of the GONG (Global Oscillation Network Group), a series of observatories worldwide dedicated to observing the Sun around the clock. It’s strange to think, but in a sense, we live inside the outer atmosphere of our host star, and knowing just what it’s doing is of paramount importance to our modern technology-dependent civilization.
An awesome capture, with some amazing science to boot. Big Bear will also get a sunrise view of the November 11th, 2019 transit of Mercury as well:
Because it’s never too early to start planning… here’s the visibility prospects for the 2019 transit of Mercury. Image credit: Xavier Juber.
The BBSO operation is supported by NJIT, US NSF AGS-1250818, and NASA NNX13AG14G grants, and the NST operation is partly supported by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute and Seoul National University and by the strategic priority research program of CAS with Grant No. XDB09000000″.
Planets and other objects in our Solar System. Credit: NASA.
When we look at beautiful images of the planets of our Solar System, it is important to note that we are looking at is not always accurate. Especially where their appearances are concerned, these representations can sometimes be altered or enhanced. This is a common practice, where filters or color enhancement is employed in order to make sure that the planets and their features are clear and discernible.
So what exactly do the planets of the Solar System look like when we take all the added tricks away? If we were to take pictures of them from space, minus the color enhancement, image touch-ups, and other methods designed to bring out their details, what would their true colors and appearances be? We already know that Earth resembles something of a blue marble, but what about the other ones?
A composite image of the May 9, 2016 transit of Mercury across the face of the Sun, as seen by the Solar Dynamics Observatory. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO/Genna Duberstein
On May 9, 2016, Mercury passed directly between the Sun and Earth. No one had a better view of the event than the space-based Solar Dynamics Observatory, as it had a completely unobstructed view of the entire seven-and-a-half-hour event! This composite image, above, of Mercury’s journey across the Sun was created with visible-light images from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager on SDO, and below is a wonderful video of the transit, as it includes views in several different wavelenths (and also some great soaring music sure to stir your soul).
Mercury transits of the Sun happen about 13 times each century, however the next one will occur in only about three and a half years, on November 11, 2019. But then it’s a long dry spell, as the following one won’t occur until November 13, 2032.
Artist's impression of the Earth scorched by our Sun as it enters its Red Giant Branch phase. Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Fsgregs
Since the beginning of human history, people have understood that the Sun is a central part of life as we know it. It’s importance to countless mythological and cosmological systems across the globe is a testament to this. But as our understand of it matured, we came to learn that the Sun was here long before us, and will be here long after we’re gone. Having formed roughly 4.6 bullion years ago, our Sun began its life roughly 40 million years before our Earth had formed.
Since then, the Sun has been in what is known as its Main Sequence, where nuclear fusion in its core causes it to emit energy and light, keeping us here on Earth nourished. This will last for another 4.5 – 5.5 billion years, at which point it will deplete its supply of hydrogen and helium and go through some serious changes. Assuming humanity is still alive and calls Earth home at this time, we may want to consider getting out the way!
The Birth of Our Sun:
The predominant theory on how our Sun and Solar System formed is known as Nebular Theory, which states that the Sun and all the planets began billions of years ago as a giant cloud of molecular gas and dust. Then, approximately 4.57 billion years ago, this cloud experienced gravitational collapse at its center, where anything from a passing star to a shock wave caused by a supernova triggered the process that led to our Sun’s birth.
Basically, this took place after pockets of dust and gas began to collect into denser regions. As these regions pulled in more and more matter, conservation of momentum caused them to begin rotating, while increasing pressure caused them to heat up. Most of the material ended up in a ball at the center while the rest of the matter was flattened out into a large disk that circled around it.
Young stars have a disk of gas and dust around them called a protoplanetary disk. Out of this disk planets are formed, and the presence of water ice in the disc affects where different types of planets form. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The ball at the center would eventually form the Sun, while the disk of material would form the planets. The Sun then spent the next 100,000 years as a collapsing protostar before temperature and pressures in the interior ignited fusion at its core. The Sun started as a T Tauri star – a wildly active star that blasted out an intense solar wind. And just a few million years later, it settled down into its current form.
Main Sequence:
For the past 4.57 billion years (give or take a day or two), the Sun has been in the Main Sequence of its life. This is characterized by the process where hydrogen fuel, under tremendous pressure and temperatures in its core, is converted into helium. In addition to changing the properties of its constituent matter, this process also produces a tremendous amount of energy. All told, every second, 600 million tons of matter are converted into neutrinos, solar radiation, and roughly 4 x 1027 Watts of energy.
Naturally, this process cannot last forever since it is dependent on the presence of matter which is being regularly consumed. As time goes on and more hydrogen is converted into helium, the core will continue to shrink, allowing the outer layers of the Sun to move closer to the center and experience a stronger gravitational force.
This will place more pressure on the core, which is resisted by a resulting increase in the rate at which fusion occurs. Basically, this means that as the Sun continues to expend hydrogen in its core, the fusion process speeds up and the output of the Sun increases. At present, this is leading to a 1% increase in luminosity every 100 million years, and a 30% increase over the course of the last 4.5 billion years.
The life cycle of a Sun-like star, from its birth on the left side of the frame to its evolution into a red giant on the right after billions of years. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
Approximately 1.1 billion years from now, the Sun will be 10% brighter than it is today. This increase in luminosity will also mean an increase in heat energy, one which the Earth’s atmosphere will absorb. This will trigger a runaway greenhouse effect that is similar to what turned Venus into the terrible hothouse it is today.
In 3.5 billion years, the Sun will be 40% brighter than it is right now, which will cause the oceans to boil, the ice caps to permanently melt, and all water vapor in the atmosphere to be lost to space. Under these conditions, life as we know it will be unable to survive anywhere on the surface, and planet Earth will be fully transformed into another hot, dry world, just like Venus.
Red Giant Phase:
In 5.4 billion years from now, the Sun will enter what is known as the Red Giant phase of its evolution. This will begin once all hydrogen is exhausted in the core and the inert helium ash that has built up there becomes unstable and collapses under its own weight. This will cause the core to heat up and get denser, causing the Sun to grow in size.
It is calculated that the expanding Sun will grow large enough to encompass the orbit’s of Mercury, Venus, and maybe even Earth. Even if the Earth were to survive being consumed, its new proximity to the the intense heat of this red sun would scorch our planet and make it completely impossible for life to survive. However, astronomers have noted that as the Sun expands, the orbit of the planet’s is likely to change as well.
When the Sun reaches this late stage in its stellar evolution, it will lose a tremendous amount of mass through powerful stellar winds. Basically, as it grows, it loses mass, causing the planets to spiral outwards. So the question is, will the expanding Sun overtake the planets spiraling outwards, or will Earth (and maybe even Venus) escape its grasp?
K.-P Schroder and Robert Cannon Smith are two researchers who have addressed this very question. In a research paper entitled “Distant Future of the Sun and Earth Revisted” which appeared in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, they ran the calculations with the most current models of stellar evolution.
According to Schroder and Smith, when the Sun becomes a red giant star in 7.59 billion years, it will start to lose mass quickly. By the time it reaches its largest radius, 256 times its current size, it will be down to only 67% of its current mass. When the Sun does begin to expand, it will do so quickly, sweeping through the inner Solar System in just 5 million years.
It will then enter its relatively brief (130 million year) helium-burning phase, at which point, it will expand past the orbit of Mercury, and then Venus. By the time it approaches the Earth, it will be losing 4.9 x 1020 tonnes of mass every year (8% the mass of the Earth).
But Will Earth Survive?:
Now this is where things become a bit of a “good news/bad news” situation. The bad news, according to Schroder and Smith, is that the Earth will NOT survive the Sun’s expansion. Even though the Earth could expand to an orbit 50% more distant than where it is today (1.5 AUs), it won’t get the chance. The expanding Sun will engulf the Earth just before it reaches the tip of the red giant phase, and the Sun would still have another 0.25 AU and 500,000 years to grow.
Artist’s impression of a Red giant star. Credit:NASA/ Walt Feimer
Once inside the Sun’s atmosphere, the Earth will collide with particles of gas. Its orbit will decay, and it will spiral inward. If the Earth were just a little further from the Sun right now, at 1.15 AU, it would be able to survive the expansion phase. If we could push our planet out to this distance, we’d also be in business. However, such talk is entirely speculative and in the realm of science fiction at the moment.
And now for the good news. Long before our Sun enters it’s Red Giant phase, its habitable zone (as we know it) will be gone. Astronomers estimate that this zone will expand past the Earth’s orbit in about a billion years. The heating Sun will evaporate the Earth’s oceans away, and then solar radiation will blast away the hydrogen from the water. The Earth will never have oceans again, and it will eventually become molten.
Yeah, that’s the good news… sort of. But the upside to this is that we can say with confidence that humanity will be compelled to leave the nest long before it is engulfed by the Sun. And given the fact that we are dealing with timelines that are far beyond anything we can truly deal with, we can’t even be sure that some other cataclysmic event won’t claim us sooner, or that we wont have moved far past our current evolutionary phase.
An interesting side benefit will be how the changing boundaries of our Sun’s habitable zone will change the Solar System as well. While Earth, at a mere 1.5 AUs, will no longer be within the Sun’s habitable zone, much of the outer Solar System will be. This new habitable zone will stretch from 49.4 AU to 71.4 AU – well into the Kuiper Belt – which means the formerly icy worlds will melt, and liquid water will be present beyond the orbit of Pluto.
Perhaps Eris will be our new homeworld, the dwarf planet of Pluto will be the new Venus, and Haumeau, Makemake, and the rest will be the outer “Solar System”. But what is perhaps most fascinating about all of this is how humans are even tempted to ask “will it still be here in the future” in the first place, especially when that future is billions of years from now.
Somehow, the subjects of what came before us, and what will be here when we’re gone, continue to fascinate us. And when dealing with things like our Sun, the Earth, and the known Universe, it becomes downright necessary. Our existence thus far has been a flash in the pan compared to the cosmos, and how long we will endure remains an open question.
